Lunar Girls
by Aea
Summary: Earth's best mechanic. Moon's best programmer. What could go wrong?  Cinder's escape from prison


Soo...I'm not entirely sure how this happened. I sat down to write Hunger Games fic (to say nothing of an iCarly piece and a She's the Man piece I need to finish...), and when I looked up I ended up with this.

I loved and hated the ending of _Cinder. _It was a great breaking point to set up a story with a totally different feel in the next book, but at the same time, so many questions left! Here's my attempt at answering one or two of them. Cheers for a series with the ladies taking care of business! ;-) I love fairy tales and I love robots, so this series seems like it's going to work out for me.

I don't own any part of the Lunar Chronicles series. I mean only the highest respect by playing around in Marissa Meyer's universe!

* * *

><p><strong>Lunar Girls<strong>

Cinder could never _not_ be a mechanic.

Not in the same right and manner as being, say, _a Princess or anything_, of course. It's not like she was born under a glowing sign that said "Pick up a wrench, all ye who enter here." She didn't dream of it as a child (she's pretty sure) or fight hard in school to learn about physics and engineering (the schoolwork came easy to her, but she wanted to be a teacher).

It's just that she had to be a mechanic because after the way she was raised, she's much too self-sufficient to put her own well-being in someone else's hands like that.

_Kai's easy smile in the marketplace._

Well, she used to be.

Now, though, now she's got a perpetual image of the Eastern Commonwealth's young emperor behind her eyes and clings to the two chips in her calf like a life-preserver.

* * *

><p>A world away, there's another girl who could never <em>not<em> be a programmer.

Not because she's driven to it by sheer passion or mere chance, but because the Queen, or Sybil, or someone acting on their orders would kill her if she refused.

It's a _very_ good reason to be a programmer.

And really, the Lunar Palace isn't a terrible place to work, compared to most things. Her view of the Mare Serenitatis is unparalleled. She's got the best net connection this side of the Kuiper Belt. She has everything she could ever want a mere comm request and delivery android away.

On the other side of a perpetually locked door.

It's alright, though. For all the distasteful things they make her do, no one ever asks her to cut her hair and she's counting inches from the window to the ground floor.

* * *

><p>Escaping from prison is not exactly an easy thing, Cinder realizes.<p>

There's obvious method, of course. But if she just walks through the open door, before the guard returns, she's sure that Levana will blame Kai for letting her go. He'll die for it, Earth will go to war and it will be all her fault. She could try to- what was is Dr. Erland called it?..._Glamour_- her way past the guards, but that would only be passing Kai's death sentence onto them.

Could she fight her way out? Give the Palace guards the appearance of stopping her? Cinder gave her new limbs a flex. They were strong, heavy. Capable of doing enough damage to keep a few guards from following her. Was she? So many people had already suffered because of her…what was half a dozen more? _Half a dozen too many,_ Cinder answers herself determinedly. No, she could not fight her way out. She was still angry with Dr. Erland, and the untold number of young cyborgs that he killed en route to finding her. _No more._

She'll have to wait until the Lunar guard comes for her and try to fight her way out then. It's not a very good plan, but it is the only one she can live with.

Which left her in a painfully familiar position: with nothing. She should be used to it by now.

Of course, Cinder seethes, she _should _at home, having dinner with Peony and working on an ancient car with Iko. She _should_ be fully human, and not piecemeal metalwork and computers. She _should_ be two hundred miles outside of New Beijing by now, getting lower on gasoline but higher in spirits with every inch she rolls away.

"No!" Cinder clenched her fist. _Adrenaline levels building. Heart rate exceeding permissible bounds. _Electricity flew though her as she punched the wall near the entrance with her new hand. Cinder observed the dent, still somewhat surprised she remained standing. She was so _close_ now; she'd made the decision to try. Was she so useless that she couldn't even get out of the Palace without getting someone killed?

The electricity slowly left her until only a small crackle, like static, remained.

"_Oh!_ You're still there! He-_hello?" So much for standing. _Lost in her own thoughts, and not adjusted to the steadiness of her newly installed foot, Cinder jumped into an untidy heap on the ground as a tiny voice echoed in her head.

_Someone else's voice_.

"Hey! Um, are you still there? I don't have any video on my end, but…Oh, oh, what am I doing?" The annoying cry jarred Cinder back to reality. _Voice matching complete: 97.9% confirmed._

The girl from the Lunar Palace. In her haste to make it to Kai on time, she'd plugged the chip in without much thought. She hadn't turned it on, that much she knew. How much could she trust this girl?

"Who," Cinder rasped, "Who are you?"

There was a pause on the other end. "You can call me Rampion."

"That's not your real name?" Cinder gained a modicum of respect for the girl. She wouldn't give her real name either. Maybe she was made of stronger stuff than Cinder had thought.

"That's probably best isn't it? For now, at least. You don't need to tell me who _you_ are though. It's been all over the news up here. _Princess Selene's Attempted Assassination of the Queen._"

"That wasn't me." Cinder lied lamely. "I'm not…" the words were bitter on her tongue. "the _Princess._"

Rampion actually had the nerve to _laugh_. Cinder's eyes narrowed, wishing the girl could see her annoyance. _She is a wretched girl_.

"No. I've been trying to turn this D-COMM on all night. I'm not sure how you've got it connected, but it's not installed on anything _I_ can turn on remotely. The only way I can get through is if _you_ turn it on, and you did. Twice. And what I picked up the first time is more than enough to convince me you were the same girl."

"You're lying!" Cinder screamed. _Warning:_ _Blood pressure increasing. _"I haven't turned this thing on at all. The only reason I even _kept_ it was in case you could help me save Kai! And now I can't even save myself!"

"Ok! Ok! Princess, I'm sorry! I'm so _sorry!_ Your maj- Sele- Oh, no. _Please_ calm down. You'll short out the D-COMM again and I'll _lose you_!"

Cinder sighed deeply, and felt the cooling gray mist descend on her. If she really was going to make this happen, save the world, save _Kai_, she had to get her _Glamour_ stuff under control.

Rampion continued, still slightly hysterical. "You had the chip on you right? I've been trying to get through to you all night, but it's been shut off." Cinder continued breathing: in, out, in, out…She _hated_ plugging in this way, _never_ should have done it… "I can't access the connection now unless _you_ open the channel. But your bioelectricity is strong stuff. It powered on the D-COMM for a couple of seconds last night. And again just now. That's _it._ I'm not spying. I _promise!_"

Cinder shakes her head. "No, I don't believe you."

"Princess! Listen to me!" The voice in her head takes on an edge it hasn't had before. Cinder, surprisingly, does listen. "You have no idea, _no idea_, what your existence means to us up here. We don't _want_ things to be the way they are. It hasn't even been a full day, and we already have more hope in the future. More than we've had in a long time."

"_Please_ stop calling me that." It's the only response Cinder can formulate.

"Ok, I can do that." Her distant partner agrees softly. "And I'll do whatever it takes to prove to you I'm on your side."

"Can you get me out of here?" Cinder asks, without much hope. She must be the only person in the world who won't break out of an open jail cell.

"Out of where?" Rampion, responds, confused. "Where are you?"

"Palace jail." Cinder's glum voice answers. "But I can't really leave. If I escape now, it'll just give the queen more reasons to hurt Kai."

"Only if it's Earth's fault you escaped." Rampion offers. Her voice gets higher and faster with each word. Cinder gets the impression she's not really the one Rampion is speaking to anymore. "If it was a _Lunar_ issue, she'd leave the planet quick to come home and clean house, I bet…You could move much more freely…"

"Please don't put yourself in danger for me."

There's a _tsk, tsk_. Rampion chuckles again. Cinder thinks she changes moods much too quickly, and is perhaps, very, _very_ lonely. "Trust me, Selene. You're talking to the best programmer on two worlds here." There's a pause and the rapid hums of many netscreens being used. "Oh, for the love of…is your jail cell actually already _open?_"

If Cinder could blush, she would. "…Yes. But-"

"Get out of there. Now."

"I already told you, I can't!"

"A Lunar computer virus is going to hit all the cells in your block. It's useless- a dummy, but no one in the Lunar guard there is smart enough to know it. After that, a comm is going out to all the major news networks that a new radical Lunar group is taking responsibility for freeing you. But you need to be clear of the prison before then. The Queen will likely come home to brainwash the public again, and that will give you a couple of days to leave the Commonwealth."

Cinder hesitated. "But what about-" Then the lights blinked off.

"Go!"

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><p>Fin.<p>

I don't actually know if this is the end. I intended to write only a one-shot, so I can't promise more. At the same time, I feel like there's a lot of room for imagination in this universe...Hmm. What are your thoughts?


End file.
